The Bridge of Sighs

by Olen Steinhauer

  “And you let him in?” Lena asked.

  She shook her head. “I remembered what you’d told me. I asked him to wait, but he didn’t wait.” The man shouldered his way inside and began rifling through Lena’s cabinets and drawers. Irma followed him, explaining that he would have to leave, that her mistress would return soon with a policeman. The intruder finished with the drawers and moved on to the bookshelves.

  They looked around. Half the books from the shelves covering the wall lay scattered on the floor.

  “I put a hand here.” Irma placed her fingers on her own shoulder. “He slapped me then. He had white gloves. Soft. And he asked me where it was.”

  “It?” said Lena, “it?”

  Irma nodded as vigorously as her blood-puffed face would allow. She didn’t know what it was. She told the man as much, but he began beating her, and as his fists struck he repeated the question: Where is it? Finally, he gave up and returned to the shelves. He took each book and flipped through it very quickly, as though speed-reading, catching any slip of paper that fell out and looking at it before going on to the next title. He shouted sometimes out of frustration: It’s here, isn’t it?

  Lena looked at Emil, then at her maid. “And he never said-”

  “Never.” Irma s grainy voice had acquired an edge of impatience.

  There was little more to the story. When Emil’s Mercedes rolled up the drive, she had tried to make it to the door, but the intruder was on her again. He beat her face and chest until she collapsed on the stairs. Then he ran to the rear of the house, where he had parked his car.

  “Can you describe him?” asked Emil.

  “Tall,” she said resolutely. “Light hair, old eyes.”

  “Old eyes?”

  “Wrinkled. Dark.” She closed her own eyes. “His face was thin. He had—I think—a German accent.”

  “German?”

  She looked at him again with wet, red eyes. “I’m sure. German.”

  Emil took out one of the nine photographs still in his pocket. He showed it to her. He pointed at the man who was not Smerdyakov, the one who had said: Comrade Emil Brod?

  “Oh God.” Her bruised head nodded with conviction.

  “Go,” Emil said. “Both of you pack some clothes.” He felt himself sinking.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  *******************

  In the car, he finally admitted to his gunshot wounds. A few words, nothing more. Lena was beside him, and her face quickly exposed her feelings—it felt good to see the deep concern that she finally controlled by speaking: “Christ, Emil. You almost died.”

  He shrugged, but even that movement hurt.

  He was given three stitches to reclose his wound, and Irma was given, for a substantial bribe to the Unity Medical head nurse, a private bed. He drove Lena to the Brod apartment. They said nothing the whole way, but the silence was a warm, easy thing. Despite the cane, he was able to carry her small leather suitcase, and he set it down just inside the door.

  “She’s staying here, maybe a few days,” he told Grandfather, who was grinning in his chair, wet-mouthing an unlit, frayed cigar.

  Lena tried to hide her disappointment as she looked around the meager home. Grandmother was still out.

  “A girlfriend?” Grandfather asked when Lena was in the bathroom washing up.

  “A widow,” said Emil. “A case.”

  “Some widow.” He stuck the cigar back in his mouth. “You look like hell.”

  He was leaving stains on everything he touched. “I tried to run down a car.”

  “A motor car?”

  Emil nodded.

  “Youre a goddamn dog, that’s what you are.”

  By the time she emerged from the bathroom, Lena’s disappointment had become a buoyancy he could see in her step, in her smile, as if she had decided this was not to be a sacrifice, but an adventure.

  “Do you have anything to drink?” she asked the room.

  “Girl after my own heart,” said Grandfather as he grunted out of his chair and went for the liquor cabinet.

  It took an hour to heat his bathwater, and by the time he emerged, bruised but clean, toweled dry and in fresh clothes, Grandmother had returned and made dinner. She gazed over her plate at Lena. When she spoke, her voice was thick with admiration: “Who else lives out there? Near you.”

  Both Lena and Grandfather were tipsy by now. She smiled slyly at her drinking partner before answering. “No one, not really. A lot of bores” She choked down more cabbage soup, which, for an instant, made her easy demeanor stumble: She looked as though she had discovered new teeth. Then she swallowed. “Rich people are as dull as proles, I can promise you that.”

  “You’re kidding me,” said Grandfather, and it took a moment before Emil realized he was being sarcastic. “But aren’t they all filled with charm? With poise7.” He sipped from his spoon daintily and stared at Lena. He was plainly charmed, head over heels.

  Lena settled her gaze on him. “Comrade Avram Brod,” she said in a suitable Russian accent, “the wealthy are butter in our churn. Delicious.”

  Grandfather burst out laughing, suddenly red-faced, healthy again. Spittle shot across the table, and Lena laughed too, winking at Emil, the brandy and laughter flushing her cheeks. The old man pointed at Lena, and between gasps said, “This one. This one.”

  *********

  He slept on the sofa—or, he tried to sleep. It was difficult, knowing she was only a couple yards away, in his bed. He was distracted, horny, and had to throw off his sheet; he was sweating. He ached everywhere. If he went to her, he could do nothing anyway. Not in his condition. He sat on the balcony, looking out to where a lone woman stood at the water spigots. A dog circled nearby, sniffing the ground around her.

  Blackmail. It was the only thing that made sense. Janos Crowder had blackmailed Jerzy Michalec with something that could fit in a book: a document, or a photograph, like the ones he had found. Aleksander Tudor became mixed up in it at some point. There was a German working with Michalec. Maybe he was the deliveryman, bringing the boxes of cash to Janos s door. But at some point Michalec decided he would no longer pay, and instead liquidated Janos.

  One pail was full, and she set it down with a thump on the cobblestones, then started filling another.

  He tried to think through what he was going to do. There were rational options. Put Lena into protective custody, or keep her here. File a report on the German assailant; he had the man s photograph, after all. He could ask the other inspectors for help, or even advice. They had decades of experience between them.

  The dog was circling closer, sniffing out dinner on the woman’s dirty skirt.

  Lena was spread under his sheets in his room. The rational solutions left him. He still didn’t trust those homicide inspectors, no matter how many cakes and coffees they brought him. That would take a long time. Maybe he could get advice from them, nothing more.

  A few streets away some dogs began barking in an uneven chorus, and the mutt down below stopped sniffing, raised his head, and barked back. Then more dogs joined in, from streets further out, and soon it was all he could hear. The woman down by the spigot was running as best she could with her heavy pails into an alley, and the dog in the square was walking in a circle, backward, barking frightfully at canine armies he heard but could not see. It was a city of dogs.

  He knew, all of a sudden, that he couldn’t do it. This was too important. He couldn’t protect Lena on his own.

  “Tell me about the shooting,” said Emil. “The one who shot me.”

  Leonek sat down, and they faced each other over Emil’s typewriter. He shrugged. “What’s to tell? Tall guy in an overcoat. A hat. You saw him. Right?”

  “Briefly.”

  Leonek pulled an ankle up over his knee. “He shot you three times and drove away.”

  “Did you get the plates?”

  “No license. But it was dark blue. One of those Czech models. Streamlined. A Tatra, I think.”

&nbs
p; Emil hesitated, remembering. “Was he driving the car? Or someone else?”

  “Yes. Just him.” He glanced over at Brano Sev working away in his corner, then let his foot drop to the ground again. He leaned forward, voice lowered. “But listen, Brod: This is done. It’s finished. These aren’t the kind of men you want to chase after. You understand?”

  Emil noticed a dead roach on his desk and flicked it away.

  “You attacked him, and he attacked you “ said Leonek. “It’s over.”

  “Listen.”

  Leonek held up a warning hand and glanced back at Sev, who still faced the wall, then nodded at the door. “Come on, let’s get a drink.”

  This bar was a few streets away, hidden beneath a flat-faced, between-the-wars post office, reached by a door recessed in the sidewalk. Despite the early morning hour, it was filled with the law-enforcement community, He saw judges and prosecutors and even overdressed members of state security, looking much more distinguished and put-together than their own department’s famous-but-sloppy security inspector. The bar was the longest Emil had ever seen, its clean brass fixtures shining. A stiff, white- shirted bartender asked very formally what they would have to drink.

  “Two beers,” said Leonek as he tossed coins on the counter.

  He helped Emil to a table in the corner, pushing through fat men in suits. They sank into a plush, velvet booth. “ You come here?”

  Leonek shrugged. “Not usually. Tell me what’s going on.”

  So Emil did. He sipped his lukewarm beer and related all the details. The man who searched Lena Crowder’s house was the same man who had shot him, a German, and a German was seen around Janos Crowder’s apartment before he died. All roads led to the German. The German led to Smerdyakov.

  “How’s that?”

  Emil took out the small photos again—worn now, a little damp—and handed them over.

  “Where did you get these?”

  “Behind Aleks Tudor’s icebox. You recognize them?”

  Leonek held one close to his face, then the next, one at a time until he had seen them all. “Smerdyakov,” he whispered, then nodded. “And your killer.” He laid a hand over the photographs, covering them. “Lena Crowder doesn’t know what it is? This thing?”

  “No.”

  “That’s her story.”

  “She doesn’t know.” Four Central Committee members made a loud circle near the bar, singing some rowdy song from their youth.

  Leonek dropped the photos by his beer and shook his head.“You know you can t touch him, right? He’s not a full member of the Politburo yet, but he’s almost there. He’ll be one of a select twenty. People like you and I can’t do anything.”

  “Obviously some people can, or he wouldn’t be murdering them.”

  A pause, as Leonek rethought his approach. When he spoke he whispered. “Listen. Jerzy Michalec started off as the top man in the Central Committee, back in ‘forty-five. His best friends are the minister of international affairs, the chairman of Party control, and the head of regional secretaries. He eats lunch with Mihai himself. Do you see what I’m saying?”

  “He’s connected.”

  “No, you goddamn idiot. Michalec is the connection. Once he’s a full member of the Politburo, it’s just a few years until he’s nestled beside Mihai, waiting to receive the General Secretaryship.” Leonek leaned back, his voice severe: “When that happens, when Michalec becomes General Secretary, you, my friend, are a dead man.”

  They looked at each other across the table. Emil had listened to so little before—he’d understood everything like a child. His cold fingers tapped distractedly on his glass, then stopped. When Jerzy Michalec became General Secretary, there would be no place in the entire country to hide.

  “You remember when we brought in Liv Popescu?”

  Emil nodded.

  “You asked what was wrong, and I lied. I said it was nothing.” Leonek looked down and gathered himself before continuing. “But the case—Cornelius Yoskovich in particular—made me think of my informer, Dora.” He stopped again, drank some beer.

  “The bastard who lied about me?”

  Leonek nodded morosely. “I first knew Dora years ago. He was a banker—it’s hard to imagine. He had a wife and a daughter. This was a little before the war—summer of ‘thirty-eight—and I was as new to the Militia as you are now. Back then we weren’t relegated to just homicides. It was a peaceful town; we didn’t need a homicide department.”

  He paused again, and Emil wanted to ask him how old he was, because to Emil he looked so young, but he had the kind of face that would hide its age until he was a very old man.

  Leonek said, “There were accusations at his daughter’s school. Apparently, Dora had been spending his lunch hours there, and he would talk to his daughter’s friends. They were ten and eleven, pretty young. After a while, he invited them out of the schoolyard and talked them into coming with him to a hotel room. He did this with many of the girls. Finally, the girls started telling their families.”

  Emil started to speak, but realized he had no question to ask.

  “It’s a short story,” said Leonek. “I brought him in on multiple charges of molestation. It was a simple, straightforward case. I hated this man, and I was happy to put him away. It was a good day for me.” He drank some more and squinted into the gloom. “But Dora convinced the royal prosecutor’s office that he had information on illegal financial transactions, some major scandals, lots of them, and they made a deal. He was free.”

  “They let him go?” Emil finally asked. “Just like thatV

  “Sure,” said Leonek, shrugging. “Dora’s wife took their girl and left the country—she had family in Switzerland. And the bank, once they learned about the confidential information he’d given out, fired him. His life was fixed from that point. A permanent criminal, a pimp. He lures little girls just in from the countryside. Information is his protection. But he works by habit: I’m the only one he’ll talk to. He’s my curse.” His glass was empty, but he upended it regardless, then set it down. Laughter came from the front. “Sometimes Dora makes the difference between solving a case or giving up.”

  “This man is shit.”

  Leonek nodded his agreement. “But this is life, my friend. You make it the best way you can. You compromise, and you know when you are beat. But one day, Dora will run out of information, and I’ll be standing over him, with a gun to his head.”

  Emil pressed his fingers against his closed eyes until he saw stars. Then he blinked, focusing. “Tell me, then.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “What you would do now. You’ve been in this for years. A veteran.”

  Leonek had a pack of cigarettes that he rotated in his fingers, hammered lightly on the tabletop, then began to open. “Drop it,” he said finally. “It’s a dead case anyway. The chief won’t let you touch it; he takes orders too. He’s a good soldier, but he won’t break any rules for you.”

  “I see.”

  “Don’t look so down.” He offered Emil a cigarette. “This is too big for you. You’re a cripple, you’ll end up dead. Throw your dear Comrade Lady Crowder to the wolves, and come get drunk with me.”

  They lit their cigarettes. The slurred sounds of wasted politicians washed over them.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  *******************

  Grandfather opened the door before Emils hand could touch the knob. He looked confused. “A call,” he said feebly. “Yes.”

  “There was a call?”

  Emil heard banging sounds from inside. Grandfather s confusion melted into shame. “How was I to know?”

  In the bedroom, Lena threw clothes into her bag. She stopped only to shout: “Your grandfather has been advertising me!”

  He was shuffling around the living room, shrugging helplessly. “How was I to know?” He stopped and said to Emil, “The man asked, Is Lena Crowder staying with you? What was I to say?”

  “You lie” barked Lena, slamming her v
alise shut.

  Emil held up his hands as though his command for calm might be heeded. Lena ripped up the bedsheets angrily, searching for something. Grandmother appeared from her bedroom with a fistful of scarves in dusty, muted colors. She presented them to Lena. “Will these do?”

  Lena’s voice dropped an octave. “You’ve been very kind, Mrs. Brod.”

  “Comrade Brod to you,” warned Grandfather.

  “You wouldn’t know a comrade if he shoved Das Kapital-”

  “I was in Moscow!”

  “Now,” said Emil as he put his arms around his grandparents’ shoulders and led them into their bedroom. Once inside, they looked at him questioningly. “Wait here,” he said, and closed the door.

  He squatted to pick up the cane, then returned to his bedroom. Lena stood up from the bed, arms crossed. She was in a ladies’ suit, narrow at the waist, wide mustard lapels. He lowered himself into a rickety chair, grunting. The beer had ruined his stomach.

  “I’m leaving, Inspector Brod. You won’t stop me.”

  “I don’t want to stop you,” he said. “Do you have a cigarette?”

  She took out her pack, but didn’t have matches. While she went to the kitchen to find some, he wondered whom he knew in the city that she could stay with; Leonek was a choice anyone would figure out. But he knew very few people—solitude had never before been a problem. Those few he could dredge up—Filia, perhaps, and her soldier husband—he didn’t know if he could trust.

  Lena squatted beside his knees, lit a cigarette and passed it to him. He took a drag and looked at the box in her hand: American. “We’re both leaving town.”

  She picked tobacco off her tongue and waited for more.

  “Do you have money?”

  She nodded.

  “A lot?”

  She shrugged, then nodded again.

  “No one can know where we’re going, all right?”

  “No one except me?”

  “Not yet,” he said, and took another drag. “I won’t tell my family, and I won’t tell you. Not until we’re on our way.”